Able Fine Art NY Gallery is pleased to present “Nexus,” a solo exhibition of the work of Korean artist Jeon Nak.

For this exhibition, Jeon Nak has created a series of exciting lenticular prints that draw the eye into an astonishing three dimensional space. His images contain a symphony of line and color backed with a tremendous illusion of space. His 3D trompe l'oeil creations achieve their arresting presence through a meticulous, exacting technical process. Jeon Nak's mastery of technique and bold new vision signal important works of contemporary art that can only truly be experienced first-hand.

August comes with two new exciting exhibitions at Agora Gallery. Idiosyncratic Expressions and Interpretative Realms present a collection of artists who turn the art world on its head. In Idiosyncratic Expressions, colors combine in unexpected ways, forms emerge from obscurity, and textures distort scenes into something wholly unique and important. Sharing the gallery, Interpretative Realms presents paintings that invite deep introspection, as these international artists present scenes of abstraction and familiarity, re-examining their subjects with their individual, invaluable perspectives.

The exhibitions open on July 31st and will run until August 20th, 2015. The opening reception will take place Thursday, August 6th, from 6-8 PM. The exhibitions and opening reception are open to the public.

Agora Gallery is a contemporary fine art gallery located in the heart of Chelsea’s fine art district in New York. Established in 1984, Agora Gallery specializes in connecting art dealers and collectors with national and international artists. The art gallery’s expert consultants are available to assist corporate and private clients in procuring original artwork to meet their organization’s specific needs and budget requirements. With a strong online presence and popular online gallery, ARTmine, coupled with the spacious and elegant physical gallery space, the work of our talented artists, who work in diverse media and styles, can receive the attention it deserves. Over the years Agora Gallery has sponsored and catered to special events aimed at fostering social awareness and promoting the use of art to help those in need.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – AMERINGER | McENERY | YOHE is pleased to announce BLACK/WHITE, a group exhibition curated by Brian Alfred. The exhibition will open on 9 July 2015 and will remain on view through 14 August 2015. Receptions for the artists will be held on 9 July and 23 July from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. The public is welcome.

A diverse group of thirty artists, working in a range of mediums, are immersed in dialog through the selective lens of black and white.

The works included explore the effectiveness of this limited palette to depict light and space, mimic three- dimensionality, and allow for a greater focus on form, line, and subject.

Works rich with symbolism, metaphor, and association are juxtaposed against each other creating surprising and bold pairings. Together these works explore the constraint of black and white while visually rendering theoretical themes.

It is to leaf through an old book: From Harz to Hellas all are cousins
Goethe Faust Book II

The tragedy of costume and implement is ultimately the history of human tragedy
Aby Warburg

Who’s your Daddy?
Warhol or Beuys?
Kiefer or Kelly?
Must we choose?

Any reference to an archetype real or imaginary is purely coincidental. They have been banished from an oedipal world. But does that mean we believe any less? Given enough time and distance; little by little; the censor nods off. The repressed return to the party. Disguised as humor, satire or critical homage, the re-enchantment of the world occurs through barely veiled and often unconscious manifestations of cultic ritual.
Clearly we are not just dealing with the legacy of Joseph Beuys. The materials are different. No copper, felt or fat this time around. It’s not warm or invitingly tactile. Nor is it the organic palette of an imaginary Eurasia (or for that matter the deserts of the American west) Our neo-archetypes have a penchant for synthetic polymers; painted plastic and polyester. Our shaman’s garments hide magic between layers of garish tinsel and vulgar neon bunting. A contemporary veneer of chic (but of course acceptably cheap) cloaking the archaic vestments.

These are the dressings we use to renovate the museum’s ruins which by now are composed more of conjectural Bondo than any single solid meta-narrative. Yet why not teach a history of art history in a Home Depot while we shop for our supplies? Aby Wahrburg in aisle six by the lumber. Winckelmann by the spackling paste. Would you like to guess who’s in plumbing?

This exhibition brings together artists who walk art history through a performative trajectory. Through personal and collective implications their work weaves a restaged and abreacted collection of gestalt materials into specific sites that snake through the ritualistic framework lurking just beneath the positivist armature of our art historical narrative.

Andrew Edlin Gallery will host its final exhibition at its Chelsea location with a presentation by seven artists who were invited to create works related to the environment and install them directly onto the walls, ceilings and floors of the gallery. Each artist will be given a large chunk of the space and seven days and nights to complete their piece. The building will then be demolished some time in the near future.

Photography was destined to be involved with death. Reality is in color, but at its beginnings photography always discolored reality and turned it into black and white. Color is life, black and white is death. A ghost was hiding in the invention of photography.

- Nobuyoshi Araki, in an interview with Nan Goldin, 1995.

June 23 — Nobuyoshi Araki’s latest exhibition at Anton Kern Gallery, EROS DIARY, is comprised of a series of 77 new black and white photographs, which break from his traditional ruminations on eroticism and death to reflect more inwardly on the artist’s own life and mortality. These photographs highlight an unusual softness and sombre introspection as Araki internalizes recent personal traumatic events including the loss of his beloved cat, Chiro, his fight with prostate cancer, and later, the loss of vision in his right eye.

Each photograph is timestamped in reference to Araki’s anniversary of his marriage to his wife Yoko, who died in 1990. This date also coincides with the Chinese Qixi Festival, also known as the Tanabata Festival in Japan, a celebration of the annual meeting of “The Cowherd and Weaver Girl,” an ancient Chinese folktale where two forbidden lovers reunite once a year for a single night. The persistent repetition of this date speaks at once to both the artist’s reverence for his spouse and original muse, while also highlighting her absence in his life.

For Araki, photography itself represents a diary: a record of what happens day to day in his life, and the act of taking a photograph represents the killing of a moment or life, where his “self” is pulled out through the subject. In consequence of this action, as well as his age, illness, and life experience, the images in EROS DIARY become memorialized, showing us the distinct humanistic truths of joy, sorrow, life and death. These images, which are at times humorous, sexual, melancholy, and reflective, depict the entire spectrum of life from a personal perspective foreshadowing death.

With a career spanning six decades, Nobuyoshi Araki is one of the most prolific photographers of all time, having published over 400 books and exhibited in over 280 solo shows worldwide. Born in 1940 in Tokyo, Araki began his career as a commercial photographer, before making the intensely sexual Kinbaku bondage photographs he became known for. In 1971 he published his seminal book Sentimental Journey, and in 1991, Winter Journey, documenting both the euphoria of his honeymoon and sadness from his wife’s death. EROS DIARY is Araki’s fourth exhibition at Anton Kern Gallery.

The exhibition opens on Thursday, July 9 and runs until August 7, 2015. The gallery’s summer hours are Monday through Friday from 6-8pm. For further information and images, please contact at gallery at 212.367.9663 or email: jasmin@antonkerngallery.com.

Character traits are the myriad of distinct qualities that, in tandem, define our individuality. In isolation, each trait can seem predictable or cliché, yet within the context of art, these traits transcend their fixed entities to become infinitely idiosyncratic gestures, recombined in limitless ways to determine a unique point of view. Disembodied, and allowed to interact and mutate, these characteristics can evolve into an original visual language. Each artist in this exhibition evokes a surreal world inhabited by a litany of unorthodox and bizarre characters, creating a paragon of “sui generis” interpretations.

“Character Traits” brings together nine young artists who reinvigorate the rich intersection of figurative abstraction via distinctive compositions, materials and processes. Each artist channels a unique range of influences that capture the characteristic spirit of a culture, movement, or a specific time period, while representing an aesthetic very much in the now. Motifs reminiscent of modernism, outsider assemblage, thrift store paintings, psychedelic cartoons, and zine culture permeate the work. These artists are not defined by their inspiration, but rather by the way each one has refined their influences and impulses into something entirely personal, creating fascinating languages and symbols, from the eccentric to the mundane, in order to tell their stories.

BDG is please to present our Summer Collective featuring new work by Beth Carter, Joseph Adolphe and Frederico Infante as well as Ayline Olukman, Stéphane E. Dumas, Quentin Garel and Yannick Fournié.

Beth Carter’s new sculptures continue her exploration of mythological themes with human-animal hybrids in bronze and resin. Canadian painter Joseph Adolphe presents new large-scale oil on canvas pieces that depict the subjects with masterful intensity. Adolphe’s works have an Old Master/Expressionist quality with rich, visible brushstrokes and a clear understanding of motion; however, he endows his work with an undeniable modernity and relevancy to today’s rapidly changing world. His new paintings include bulls and guns in his signature style. In addition to Adolphe’s paintings, we have new pieces from Chilean artist Federico Infante on view. Infante’s acrylic masterpieces blend areas of abstraction with sections of exceptionally defined details.

Ayline Olukman creates mixed media pieces using her own photographs taken during her travels combined with old photos, mostly from the 1950’s, that she finds while traveling. Olukman’s bold colors give her work a decidedly modern feel while her subjects and collage-style approach add a hint of nostalgia.

Dumas’ work focuses on nature, particularly the Atlantic Ocean and the lush foliage of Normandy; however, his work is not a realistic representation of nature but rather his artistic interpretation of the natural world. Dumas’ paintings are characterized by their ethereal blend of abstract and landscape genres.

We have on view a selection of works from Yannick Fournié’s recent exhibition, INCOGNITO.

The Architectural Impulse highlights the various threads of architecture found in the work of several leading contemporary artists. From international perspectives that span three generations, these diverse artists engage elemental principles, expressions, and techniques of architecture. Their treatments of structure, geometry, materials, construction, perspective, spatial relations, and movement through space offer an alternate lens to perceive modern and contemporary art.

Encompassing an ample variety of media, such as video, painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, and installations, the selected works in the exhibition are united by a conceptual and constructive foundation in architecture. Built and conceived spaces and structures designed by trained and practicing architects inform these heterogeneous pieces; likewise, the art works have in common their examination of the metaphors and ethos of architecture.